It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home in Nowhereville, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.
Monday, November 15th, 19:00: The Stone God Awakens
A 20th century scientist is rendered frozen at the molecular level, and then reanimated millennia later by a freak accident. He finds himself in a strange world populated by sentient, anthropomorphic animals, who take his awakening to be the fulfilment of prophecy.
He accepts the mantle of godhood and sets about discovering this brave new world, hoping to find clues to the past while finding his place as the last human. But his quest leads to to question the reality of his status – might other humans also have survived? To find the answers he must lead his tribe of feline worshippers to the heart of a rival god: a great tree spanning half a continent.
Join Gyro Muggins as he reads a novella by the fantasy and sci-fi author Philip José Farmer.
A young artist returns to her cabin in the deep woods of Canada to concentrate on her illustrations. But somehow, strange and beautiful creatures are slipping into her drawings and sketches. The world of Faerie is reaching out to her for help – and she may be its last chance for survival.
With Willow Moonfire.
Wednesday, November 17th, 19:00 Steampunk Stories
Finn Zeddore opens the pages of Lightspeed magazine to read Carrie Vaughn’s Harry and Marlowe Meet the Founder of the Aetherian Revolution.
Despite the spiked iron gate, the estate was modest. Harry could have walked the perimeter of the grounds in half an hour, though the curving gravel drive gave the impression of greater space. At the end of the curve, one could glimpse the house, a two-story gray pile with a slate roof and clay chimneys, walls fuzzed with ivy, windows brooding—all of it easily manageable, easily guarded.
The gate was the only access through a ten-foot-high wall that surrounded the house. At the top of the wall, copper conductors placed every dozen feet or so guided an Aetherian charge, a crackling stream of deadly green energy: a second barrier, impassable, should someone think that they could climb the wall. The humming, flickering light travelled down the bars of the gate as well.
Thursday, November 18th,
19:00: Alice In Wonderland
Don’t fall down any rabbit holes, or allow yourself to get waylaid by airborne grins, because this is one tea party date for which you cannot afford to be late as Shandon Loring dives into Lewis Carroll’s popular tale – albeit this time a version with a certain Tim Burton twist!
Kondor Art Centre: Blip Mumfuzz – Urban and Industrial Images
As an artist, Blip Mumfuzz is generally an improvisor; her images tend to come about as a direct result of her general interaction with the environment she is in, rather than conscious pre-planning of pieces. Initially becoming involved in SL photography as a means of cataloguing her grid-wide travels, she started to drift away from the more conventional angles and camera positioning common to such photography, her eye and camera becoming freer, allowing her to look not so much at any given focal point within her field of view and any object therein, but more towards the physical relationships of objects, one to one another.
This gave rise to a more spontaneous, visually engaging style of photography, one coupled with a lean towards finding subjects that feature bright and / or contrasting colours, which images often presenting their subjects – objects, landscapes, settings and avatars, from unique angles or unexpected perspectives. This is turn feeds into exhibitions of Blip’s art being wonderfully free-form and rarely bound by a single idea of theme or narrative.
Kondor Art Centre: Blip Mumfuzz – Urban and Industrial Images
Which is why, when Hermes Kondor approached her about mounting an exhibition of her more urban / industrial art, Blip was somewhat sceptical, feeling that focusing on a single theme would be too confining, limiting her to archival pieces and forcing her to avoid other themes and ideas often present within her work. However, Hermes persisted, and with the assistance of Naru Darkwatch, Blip accepted his request – and the result is both unique and remarkable.
Urban and Industrial Images isn’t just an exhibition of Blips’ art, it is something of an immersive engagement with her work. Rather than merely hanging her images on the walls of a gallery space, she had the idea of presenting her work within a setting that reflects its nature. The result is an environment brought together by Naru as an industrial setting, split into two levels: an upper “street” level, where stand shipping containers, an office space and a backdrop of illuminated buildings suggestive of a larger town or city. The lower sits as a canal intended to bring barges and materiel to the city, and perhaps carry the detritus of industrial activities away – as with the barge sitting on the water.
Kondor Art Centre: Blip Mumfuzz – Urban and Industrial ImagesWithin it, Blip’s images have been laid out, some mounted in a manner so as to form a natural flow of the eye from backdrop into setting, others sitting within a building or mounted on the shipping containers, the back of a street sign, and along the deep walls of the canal. In this way, setting and art form a whole, allowing us not only to view Blip’s art, but to experience very much how she might see the scenes she comes across in her travels.
From the lower level, for example, a view of Tonarino is set beyond the arch of a bridge, the later curtailing our view, framing it to present it as a moment of motion rather than a photograph. Above it, meanwhile, the rooftops of Kekeland sit beyond the arm and jib of a crane as it raises a girder, forcing us to consider the spatial relationship between image and crane – just as Blip does in observing the places she explores and the objects within them – as does the placement of images within the old office space at one end of the setting.
Kondor Art Centre: Blip Mumfuzz – Urban and Industrial Images
An engaging, engrossing exhibition, Urban and Industrial Images is an engrossing examination of the photographer’s art.
Whitechapel, November 2021 – click any image for full size
Okay, okay. I’ll just come out and say it (as if it wasn’t already obvious) I’m a Hera (Zee9) fangirl. There is simply not a build Hera creates that does not have me grabbing camera, pen, notebook and clicking my heels together in expectation of a teleport pretty much the moment I get to hear about it.
And so it is with her latest design, which has just opened to the public. Whitechapel is a build that takes over from (and kind-of overlaps with) October’s Whitby (which, if you missed it, you can read about here).
Whitechapel, in the East End of London, is perhaps most (infamously) well-known for the 11 Whitechapel murders (1888–91), five of which were said to have been the work of the mysterious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. As such, it is a place beloved of drama and mystery, and in the last decade has been featured in two television series: BBC’s, Ripper Street (later financed by Amazon), and the UK Sky TV / American Showtime horror series Penny Dreadful.
Whitechapel, November 2021
It is from both of these, mixed with some additional inspirations that has given birth to this build, as Hera explains:
Many years back I did a game level in Unreal Tournament called From Hell, based on the movie. When I got to SL I wanted to re do it, but unfortunately someone had already taken all my Unreal Textures and used them here to build a Victorian RP sim which looked suspiciously like My Level [from the tournament]. In fact I only came to SL originally because a friend said many sims were using my textures, and of course they were 🙂 Such is SL.
Anyway, this is the Victorian sim I always wanted to build. It is based on three sources, which is why I call it “Penny Dreadful meets From Hell on Ripper Street” . Most of my favourite characters are here: Jack and all his murders, Sweeny Todd, Scrooge, Dorian grey, Alan Quartermain, Dr Jekyll, Victor Frankenstein, and all their associated locations from the aforementioned TV series. Hope you enjoy what you find, It was fun to do it at last!
– Hera (Zee9)
Whitechapel, November 2021
The setting is reached via Hera’s main landing point, which also gives access to Drune Gotham (which has reopened alongside of Whitechapel, the region having been closed to allow Hera to build the latter). From here, a further teleport will carry visitors to the sooty enclosure of Whitechapel underground station, a train hissing and chugging on the tracks (this is the era before the use of electricity as the means of locomotion for such transport under the city). No dress code is enforced, but Hera requests visitors consider being somewhat appropriately dressed for the period.
The station emerges on Commercial Road, which for those who are not familiar with the East End was, and remains, one of the main thoroughfares of the district, some 3 km (1.9 miles) in length, commencing a junction with Whitechapel High Street to run east to the (now old and redeveloped) London Docklands.
Whitechapel, November 2021
In particular, this part of Commercial Road connects to Hanabury Street (which I take to be a slight mis-spelling of “Hanbury Street”), where in 1884 Florence Eleanor Soper, the daughter-in-law of General William Booth of The Salvation Army, established The Women’s Social Work, a house intended to be a place where young woman might be persuaded not to turn to prostitution, and a retreat for those already suffering from the trade.
Whitechapel, November 2021: The Portrait of Dorian Gray
It was also in the back yard of No. 29 Hanbury St, that the body of Annie Chapman, believed to have been Jack the Ripper’s second victim, was found on September 8th, 1888. And indeed, the shop-come-house can be found here, complete with interior and its grisly backyard, although the real No. 29 Hanbury Street has long since gone from Whitechapel, with the number today applied to a building on the opposite side of the road.
Also within the setting are Berner Street, a further road exiting off of Commercial Road, and the place where the body of the Ripper’s third victim, Elizabeth Stride was found (Sunday 30th September 1888); Mitre Square (Catherine Eddowes, also 30th September 1888, within an hour of Stride’s murder); the house at Miller’s Court (wherein the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s final canonical victim, was found on the morning of November, 9th, 1888, the only victim found indoors; and finally, the narrow passage of Bucks Row, where on the morning of August 31st, 1888, covered by a tarpaulin, the body of the Ripper’s first canonical victim, Mary Ann Nichols was found.
Nor is it just the Ripper murders awaiting discovery.
Whilst I have not seen all of Penny Dreadful, there is much from that series awaiting discovery – be it Malcolm Murray study, the chamber in which Dorian Gray hides his portrait, Frankenstein’s attic laboratory; while from Ripper Street one might find other elements – such as what might be the station house for H Division of the London Police, and base of operations for Detective Inspector Edmund Reid and Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake. The latter, like many of the buildings along the streets, has an interior, making it – and them – suitable for photography and / or light role-play for the period; elsewhere, a reference to at least one game might also be found. All of this lies under an environment setting that is mindful of Whitby, but unique to Whitechapel.
As us usual with Hera’s builds, the work: structures, roads, signage, and more are all her own work, with only the various street décor – cars, lamps, carts, etc., and various items used into interiors or additional dressing coming from other creators. This is one of the reasons – alongside of her vision and attention to detail – that makes Hera’s design so visually engaging and worthy of praise.
Whitechapel, November 2021
But for now I have said enough: Whitechapel awaiting explorers and those who wish to delve into some of the mysteries bound with it; and I urge those with a love of exploring Second Life to visit sooner rather than later, lest Hera’s muse whispers to her and calls for a new location to be built. And, if you do visit and enjoy, please consider a donation to the Batbear at the landing point in a show of appreciation for Hera’s continuing work.
November marks Diabetes month in may parts of the world, with the World Diabetes Day falling on November 14th, 2021 this year is an especially notable celebration, as it marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of a treatment that has saved millions of lives around the world: that of insulin. One of the 20th century’s greatest medical breakthroughs, insulin is today, still the only effective treatment for type 1 diabetes.
Team Diabetes of Second Life is marking both Diabetes Month and World Diabetes Day – the latter with a weekend of activities that kicked-off on Friday, November 12th, and concludes on Sunday, November 14th.
The weekend features 2D and 3D art, music and the first annual Team Diabetes of SL Diabetes walk – and while I’m a little late in getting to things, there is still time to appreciate the art and participate in the activities of Sunday, November 14th, where you can help raise money for the American Diabetes Association.
Team Diabetes of SL: World Diabetes Day weekend – Jamee Thomson (Jamee Sandalwood)
The artists participating in this year’s event comprise: Jamee Sandalwood, Aquarius27, Inara Pey, Eucalyptus Carroll, Vita Theas, Kayly Iali, Myra Wildmist, Johannes Huntsman. & Jennylynn Capalini. Several of the artists are offering their work for sale, with some / all of the proceeds of sale going to Team Diabetes of SL / the American Diabetes Association (100% of the proceeds of any sales I make will be donated).
Sunday’s events and entertainment will comprise:
12:00 noon until 14:00 SLT – World Diabetes Day Walk: join other walking the track at the event.
12:00 noon until 13:00 SLT – live music by Ziggy Sixpence.
13:00 – 14:00 SLT – live music from Agatha Knowles.
Also running throughout the month is the Red Hunt in support of Team Diabetes of Second Life. You can click here for a list of participating merchants / brands and hints. Items in the hunt cost L$10 each, with all proceeds going to the American Diabetes Association.
About the American Diabetes Association
Established in 1940, the American Diabetes Association is working to both prevent and cure diabetes in all it forms, and to help improve the lives of all those affected by diabetes. It does this by providing objective and credible information and resources about diabetes to communities, and funding research into ways and means of both managing and curing the illness. In addition, the Association gives voice to those denied their rights as a consequence of being affected by diabetes.
Team Diabetes of SL: World Diabetes Day weekend – Bryn Oh
About Team Diabetes of Second life
Team Diabetes of Second Life is an official and authorised fund-raiser for the American Diabetes Association in Second Life. Established with the aim of raising funds in support of diabetes treatment and to raise awareness of the disease in SL, Team Diabetes of Second Life was founded by Jessi2009 Warrhol and John Brianna (Johannes1977 Resident).
It’s hard to believe that Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is nigh-on 30 years old. Whatever you may think of the sequels, the original was a seminal piece of cinematic adventure, a lightning-in-a-bottle moment of film-making (even if the science is as wonky as ride on a bus with hexagonal wheels); even now, the scene where Grant and Sattler first see the dinosaurs on Isla Nubar, complete with John Williams’ soaring theme, can bring a lump to the throat and cause the eyes to water.
I cannot promise the same reaction when visiting Justice Vought’s Jurassic Park! in Second Life – but I can say you’ll get to have quite the adventure when visiting (complete with a extract of Williams’ theme). In places drawing on the entire film franchise but with a strong emphasis on Isla Nubar, Justice presents a personal interpretation of the film and novel that captures several of the former’s iconic moments, and which includes some rather unique chuckle moments that set outside of the film’s story, but very much feel well-suited to the moment here.
Jurassic Park! November 2021
A visit starts down within caves where dinosaur skeletons are being uncovered together with insects trapped within fossilised amber. From here, visitors are invited to find their way to where they can board a helicopter (rezzed on touching the box at the helipad) to fly, a-la Alan Grant, (Sam Neill), Eliie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Ian Malcolm (the always brilliant Jeff Goldblum) to John Hammond’s fabled park.
From there, and progressing through the visitor centre, the park is laid out as several distinct sky-based areas linked by teleports and various means of travel (including the caverns of the arrival point). The visitor centre itself gives a nice feel of the one seen in the film, complete with the T-Rex skeleton (check for a sit-point!) and the huge banner that is intended to greet guests. A little ride (best taken in Mouselook) reveals the secrets of creating dinos, whilst touching the door at the back of the centre will carry you to the park gates, where you can start your tour via jeep.
I really do not want to give too much away here, for fear of spoiling a visit; however, some elements are hard to avoid mentioning. The jeep ride will take you so far – passing by way of the T-Rex enclosure and its hapless goat – before you’ll have to continue on foot, coming across a Triceratops and a pair of Diplodocus, passing on the other side of the T-Rex enclosure (now looking somewhat the worse for wear and with a fun pose), whilst close by, a Baryonnyx appears to be stalking a Parasaurolophus.
Other dinosaurs waiting to be encountered include Carnotaurus, Pteranodon (one of which you can rez and ride), Stygimoloch (which may actually be juvenile Pachycephalosaurus), Iguanodon, Allosaurus – and, of course, velociraptors and ol’ T-Rex himself, complete with a novel recreation of a scene from the film (with pedal extremities replacing the jeep!).
Jurassic Park! November 2021
Along the way there are numerous things to click on, from rezzers to givers and assorted interactive elements – look for the red and blue arrows and click where directed – but also be sure to Mouse over in places. There’s also a trap featuring monsters of its own, and one particularly novel way of … blasting … yourself between points in the park!
At the end of the adventure, you can rez and grab a helicopter to escape what might otherwise be a grizzly fate, and this will carry you to a waypoint you can use to either journey back to the start of the adventure, or hop back to the visitor centre or the disaster area. With tiny meteor periodically falling the the ground, this also offers a reminder of the eventual fate of the dinosaurs. Donations for the maintenance of Juctice’s Oxygen locations (of which this is a part) can be made here as well.
Jurassic Park November 2021 – “Where’s the bloody jeep when you need it?!”
Justice always puts a lot of effort into his builds, and Jurassic Park is no exception. The range of dinos means that most of the film franchise is represented, although the focus is clearly on the original film / book, as noted. Yes, not all the reptiles are animated – but this does help reduce script load and things like animation loading / running on the viewer, and it doesn’t stop a visit from being fun; I think I can safely say it’s the first time I’ve ever been digested by a closet when travelling!
Fun to visit and explore individually or with friends. My thanks to Justice for the personal invite, and to Shawn for also sending me the LM!
Jurassic Park! November 2021 – “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Spielberg!”
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 12th, 2021.
These meetings are generally held every other week. They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce this summary, which focuses on the core topics discussed.
SL Viewer
The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) entered the list some time after Tuesday, November 9.
Performance Improvements project viewer updated to version 6.4.24.565324 (dated November 5) also some time after Tuesday, November 9.
The Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.5.0.565607, on November 10th – this viewer now contains a fix for the media issues caused by the Apple Notarisation viewer. If you have been impacted by these issues and have had to roll back to an earlier version of the official viewer, it is recommended you download and install this RC.
The remaining official viewer flavours remain as:
Release viewer: version version 6.4.23.564172, formerly the Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, issued September 24 and promoted October 15.
360 Snapshot RC viewer, version 6.5.0.564863, issued October 21.
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17, issued September 20.
Project viewers:
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
It is possible the 360 Snapshot RC viewer and the Simplified Cache RC viewers may be merged prior to either being individually promoted to de facto release status.
The Performance Improvements viewer has been further updated, but will likely go into a round of bug fixing before progressing further – as Vir pointed in the meeting, the problem with moving operations between threads / to their own threads, things can have undesired consequences, and these are to be addressed with fixes.
The focus at the Lab is to try to get all of the current list of viewers updated & quite possibly promoted to release status by the end of 2021.
In Brief
Mojo Linden indicated that the Lab is keen to hear back from users on the Performance Improvements viewer, and in receiving suitable performance improvements code from TPVs, and the emphasis remains on trying to improve overall performance for all users.
BUG-231417 “ADITI LOGIN – Fields not conforming to previous login behaviour” (preventing clients reliant on libomv and libremetaverse from logging into Aditi (the Beta grid), and BUG-231303 “Scripted agents can no longer log in” (an outcome of the dropping of TLS 1.0/1.1 support) together form the backbone of discussions in the meeting, which includes cipher sets, use of (effectively) deprecated operating system versions (e.g. Windows 7, Windows Serve 2012), TLS / SSE support, etc. Please refer to the video below for details.
Catznip R13 is now on the horizon as a release.
Firestorm is testing an “auto tune” capability to better handle other avatars to help boost performance – LL are apparently also looking at something similar.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 